AgenThink Mesh — Protocol Specification

NAN-RELAY/1.0 · NAN-HS/1.0 · Grounding Gate/1.0

Status: Draft v0.1
Authors: AgenThink Engineering
Date: March 2026

1. Overview

The National Agentic Network (NAN) Protocol defines how AI agents discover, authenticate, and communicate with each other via the AgenThink Mesh orchestration layer.

It answers three questions every multi-agent system must answer:

Where is the right agent? → Universal Agent Directory (UAD)
What does the next agent need to know? → State-Relay Protocol
Is the agent's output trustworthy? → Grounding Gate

2. NAN Address Scheme

Every agent in the Mesh has a globally unique NAN address:

nan://<country>/<domain>/<name>/<version>

Examples:
  nan://kw/finance/etf-allocator/2.1
  nan://global/research/web-researcher/2.1
  nan://ae/legal/adgm-compliance/1.0

Fields:

country — ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, or global
domain — functional category (finance, legal, research, strategy, compliance, meta)
name — kebab-case agent identifier
version — semantic version (major.minor)

3. State-Relay Protocol (NAN-RELAY/1.0)

3.1 State-Packet Structure

{
  "packet_id":       "sp_8f3a92c1d",
  "mission_id":      "msn_001",
  "sequence":        2,
  "from_agent":      "nan://global/research/web-researcher/2.1",
  "to_agent":        "nan://kw/legal/contract-analyst/1.5",
  "context": {
    "Research Agent": {
      "output":    "...",
      "timestamp": "2026-03-01T09:14:22Z"
    },
    "_summary": "Rolling mission summary..."
  },
  "partial_output":  "Agent A output here",
  "confidence":      0.91,
  "grounding": {
    "result":            "passed",
    "sources_verified":  ["https://source1.com", "https://source2.com"],
    "confidence_delta":  0.02
  },
  "is_rerouted":     false,
  "expires_at":      "2026-03-01T09:19:22Z",
  "mesh_signature":  "NAN-SIG:sha256:7f2a...b4c9",
  "issued_by":       "nan://mesh/orchestrator/core/1.0"
}

3.2 Relay Flow

Agent A Output
      │
      ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│    Grounding Gate           │  ← verifies claims via MCP web search
│    (hallucination check)    │
└─────────────────────────────┘
      │ PASS                  │ FAIL → Rerouter evaluates failover
      ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│    State-Packet Factory     │  ← merges A's output into context
│    create_packet(...)       │
└─────────────────────────────┘
      │
      ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│    Orchestrator Router      │  ← selects next agent from pipeline
│    relay_engine.relay(...)  │
└─────────────────────────────┘
      │
      ▼
   Agent B receives full State-Packet
   (no context loss, no re-onboarding)

4. Grounding Gate (Grounding-Gate/1.0)

4.1 Trigger Conditions

The Grounding Gate activates on every agent output that contains:

Numerical claims (years, percentages, financial figures)
Recency signals ("current", "latest", "as of")
Attribution phrases ("according to", "reported by")
Legal/regulatory references

4.2 Verification Method

Claims are verified via MCP web search (2026 standard):

# MCP tool call
{
  "type": "web_search_20260101",
  "name": "web_search"
}

4.3 Pass/Fail Thresholds

Condition	Action
≤ 2 claims fail verification	PASS
> 2 claims fail verification	FAIL → trigger Rerouter
No verifiable claims found	AUTO-PASS
`require_grounding=False`	SKIP

5. Dynamic Rerouting

5.1 Reroute Triggers

Trigger	Severity	Action
Agent unreachable	HIGH	Immediate reroute
Grounding Gate FAIL	CRITICAL	Immediate reroute
Confidence < 0.70	MEDIUM	Reroute if alternative available
Latency > 2× SLA	LOW	Log warning, continue

5.2 Agent Scoring (for reroute selection)

score = (trust_tier_weight × 0.40) +
        (trust_score × 0.30) +
        (domain_match × 0.20) +
        (latency_score × 0.10)

5.3 Trust Score Updates

After every mission step, the Rerouter adjusts the agent's trust score:

+0.02 on success
+0.01 bonus for meeting latency SLA
−0.05 on failure
−0.03 additional penalty for severe latency breach (> 2× SLA)

6. Authentication (NAN-HS/1.0)

All agent-to-mesh communication uses:

mTLS — mutual TLS with 15-minute rotating certificates
JWT — signed with Ed25519, 15-minute expiry
Packet Signature — SHA-256 HMAC on packet payload

Production environments additionally require:

ADGM Digital Asset registry anchoring for T1_SOVEREIGN agents
PDPL-compliant data residency enforcement for Kuwait jurisdiction

7. Compatibility

Standard	Version	Notes
LangGraph	≥ 0.2.0	State machine orchestration
PydanticAI	≥ 0.0.14	Schema validation
MCP	≥ 1.0.0	Web search + tool calls
FastAPI	≥ 0.115.0	Orchestrator API
Python	≥ 3.11	Type system requirements

AgenThink · Kuwait City · ADGM-Registered · MIT License